1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to image editing and more specifically to color-selective editing of digital images.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
The rapid development and increasing popularity of infrastructures such as the Internet, storages and computers for transmission, storage and processing of images, has made it more convenient to handle images as electronic documents. Digital images allow easy editing facilities and users can try various editing functions such as color combinations, different shapes, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue, etc. In existing color editing tools, a color mixer or a color palette provides the functionality for trying different color combinations on a display. The color mixer shows the color of the selected shape in the digital image by a marker. If there are a number of shapes in the digital image, the color of each shape has to be identified separately in the color mixer for color editing purposes, which is tedious for the user.
With existing color editing tools, a user selects a shape having a color fill in a digital image, opens the color mixer and changes the color. For another shape in the digital image, the user selects that other shape and repeats the process. If the user wants to change the color of a group of shapes he/she has to select and change the color of each shape individually. For example, a digital image may include four shapes (Si) each having a Color fill (Ci). Initially Ci is mapped to Si. But since location, size and relative placements of shapes having color fills can make a significant difference, a designer may want C1 to go to S3, C2 to go to S4, C3 to be discarded and a new color and C4 to be kept for reference. Also, he/she needs two new colors C5 and C6 to fill the shapes S1 and S2, and try new colors in the group. Currently there are no convenient ways of swapping colors of two different shapes having two different color fills. One has to manually select the color. Also, retaining colors for future references (the colors which one might use but is not sure) is not possible. The previous color selection will be lost if the color is changed. For effective color editing, the user must select, remember and manipulate a group of colors, swap colors and view different combinations to finalize the color.
Hence, there is a need for an improved system and method for selecting and reorganizing colors in a digital image.